Gender differences in the factors that affect self-assessments of health

We hypothesized that women's self-assessments of health (SAH) would decrease more than men's when participants considered the functional limitations of illness and non-health-related sources of emotional distress. We examined the effects of type of illness, illness-produced limitations, and distress from illness- and nonillness-related sources on men's and women's SAH. Women's SAH were significantly more responsive than men's to the affective and functionally limiting aspects of illness. This suggests that women include a broader range of illness factors unrelated to mortality when evaluating their own health and explains why men's SAH have been found to be more strongly related to mortality. Contrary to our hypothesis, men's SAH were significantly more responsive than women's to social sources of distress.